The Thing With Things, Part 1

In the four years that I have had my blog, the last two months of 2012 were the least written months to date. I didn’t even make my 4 posts a month quota that I set out for myself in my first post in January 2009 (or was that only in my head).

As I begin my fifth year of blogging, I hope that I can find my love of writing again. This blog as become like creating for me in some respects: a thing I love to do and feel good about after doing, but always gets pushed to the back of the list (behind lay on the couch all night and watch terrible TV.)

I had several days off around Christmas and I used this time to revamp the closet attached to my studio. There have been built-in shelves in there since we bought the house and although shelves are always nice, these shelves were just so deep that I couldn’t even reach the back of them.

Did I mention that my studio closet is 57in x 65.5in, the size of a small bedroom in a big city really.

I had talked about tearing them out, but Bear was never really in to the idea. Then last month, I said “I think I’m going to take those shelves out myself.”

And Bear’s response, “I’m surprised you haven’t done it sooner.”

With that comment, I was ready to start demoing. Bear gave me a crow bar and a large hammer (that was almost too heavy for me to comfortably work with),  I put on my gardening gloves, to protect my hands, and some safe goggles. I made Bear leave the room. I didn’t want him to witness the awkwardness that is me working with tools.

I made a little drawing of my studio and went a searching on the IKEA website. I was so excited to have a mission and finally a real purpose for IKEA. I was proud of myself when I walked out of the store having spent just over $100 on storage solutions.

 

But when Bear went to put the shelves together, the wood split on a few of the boards. So I trekked back to IKEA to make a return and decided on some heavy duty metal shelves from Lowe’s to fulfill my storage needs.

Since the shelves were knocked out, I realized I really should paint the closet while I was at it. I wasn’t digging the dingy paint. Which meant I needed to prime the walls. And let me tell you, painting concrete walls is not fun. So many little holes!

I used left over samples from the rest of the house combined with a simple white and now the room is brighter and more useful than ever.

 

This pictures is only one side of the closet. But man, does that look good for what?! If it weren’t 58 degrees in the closet, I might want to spend some quality time in there. Oh wait! I will be because I’ve set up a new little painting station on the other end of this closet.

Which I’m still finishing up. I’ve painted two more walls white, but I have another wall to paint yellow. And another shelve to hang up and I’ll be in business.

 

I’ll be back soon, really, I promise, (that’s the deal with multiple part posts, I HAVE to come back soon) to share the final pictures of my studio and to really tell you about “The Thing with Things,” the entire reason why I started writing this post.